All you want to know about pickup trucks
Posted by cloud on November 12, 2009When we were kids, we’d hear all about how the ‘tough guys’ drove pickups, and the guys would all say they want one when they start working. The fascination with pickups ends for some with the first tastes of high-school driving, for some with college cars and for yet some others, when they enter corporate life. But for some of us, the fascination remains. If you get excited about pickup trucks or own one or would want to own one, you should read this article. Let’s begin with the basics first.
What’s a pick-up truck, you want to know? A pickup truck is essentially a light motor vehicle whose cargo area – called the ‘bed’ in trucking parlance – does not have a top. The ‘bed’ in most pickup trucks is separate from the actual cab (cabin) in order to make allowance for what is known as ‘chassis flex’ when hauling or towing heavy loads or vehicles. Now, many vehicles in North America are equipped with beds, but they’re not proper trucks. For example, vehicles like the Chevrolet El Camino or the Ford Ranchero are built on station wagon platforms. Most trucks have a channel rail or a tubular chassis along with a ‘fully floating’ cabin and also a completely separate cargo section so as to keep the sheet metal from warping and also to provide leeway for chassis flex. Some truck-like vehicles are often mistaken for pickup trucks, when they are technically not. For instance, vehicles such as the FPV Pursuit or the Holden Ute are ‘utility’ vehicles. Such vehicles have various ‘nicknames’ in different countries. In South Africa, they’re called ‘bakkies’ or ‘bucky’, while in Egypt, they’re called ‘half trucks’, and in New Zealand and Australia, they’re known as ‘ute’s.
What’s interesting to note is that the details of these vehicles in terms of how they have been designed vary from nation to nation. The pickups in North America, for example, are full-sized which means they are huge vehicles that have six cylinder / V8 engines, or they could be mid-size which is medium, or they could be compact pickups which are the smallest trucks you can find.
The very first pickup’s design, though, was inspired by the universally known, legendary ‘Ford Model T’. The first pickup was sold in the year 1925 for a price of $281. It might not seem like much today, but back then in the post-War years, it was no small sum. Thirty four thousand units were manufactured that year, and each one had four stake pockets, heavy duty rear springs, an adjustable tailgate and, of course, a cargo box. Three years later, in 1928, the Model T was replaced by the Ford Model A, a pickup truck that featured the earliest version of a closed cab. The Model A came with cool new features like roll-up side windows, a three speed transmission and a windshield made of safety glass. Its engine was a 4 cylinder L-head which could generate 40 HP.
